Sunday, October 17, 2010

A short weekend....

The weekend started out wrong. Rich drove down Thursday, parked the truck and started working. He mudded and taped some in the master bedroom closet. I drove down Friday am...later than expected because when I got into my jeep I noticed oil all over the garage floor. Turns out it wasn't mine...it was from Ryan's car. He lost all his oil (and I will have to see about that this week) so I had to run and get him oil, bring it back and then leave. As I was driving out, I got a call from Rich asking me where I was. He had tried to go into town and his battery was dead. So first thing we did was run into town and get a new battery, return to the house, install new battery and then go back into town with the truck to get 2x4's and drywall.

I mudded and taped for two days. Rich did some demolition and then started building. We decided to close up the closet in the entry way. It has a hot and cold stack running through it so we were going to have to box that in and on the back side of the closet is the kitchen where the fridge sits. They have a built in fridge, but the box isn't big enough for a regular size fridge. Theirs was very small..we did ask them to leave it so we had something to use out there.

If you look at the photo above you will see "cubbies". I don't have a before photo but someone had just put some shelves there and they were only a veggie can deep. Not much use for anything. We thought we could open up the fridge space to accommodate a regular size fridge AND have a pantry next to it. It became clear early on that the pantry would only be about 17 inches wide and 30 inches deep. So...onto Plan B...which is cubbies. There will be 4 (I would have liked 3 or 5, but I want to use one shelf for my stand mixer ) The top two shelves will be 12 inches tall and then one shelf 18 inches tall and then another one 12 inches tall... you get the idea.. I asked for the bottom to be boxed in...(right below the words "cubbies:). I got nothing but grief about that. He kept telling me "that's wasted space in there"..I kept saying "I know, but I don't want a shelf on the ground...and no..I don't want to put the trash can under the cubbies". Ultimately it is my kitchen so it will be boxed in.

At some point during the weekend, Rich decided to get out the crowbar and took the heavy trim off of all the windows ...The most dramatic reveal is in the living room... The house came with all this {cough, cough} oak woodwork... It made the inside of the house look like a cabin..not a bad thing, but not OUR thing... behind that oak trim he uncovered 2x4's. We aren't sure why they were there, but now they are all gone...along with all those vertical blinds...

It bummed us out that the sliding doors on the left side in this photo were broken. It seems the door latch was broken and they just decided to leave it instead of fixing it. Because we couldn't open the door, we assumed the latch was broken in the "locked" position. Not true. Rich fiddled with the lock trying to figure out how to force it open. We finally realized that someone had put some kind of pliable caulking between the sliding doors.. so they wouldn't open. A little time with a razor knife and now both doors open...we just need to replace the broken lock.. It really opens up the room to have all that heavy wood out of there.

And this week, our back yard will get a huge change. We have someone coming to remove the pool. You can barely see it in the above photo.. We tried to give it away...to anyone..I even joined Freecycle in the local town. .It looks really dirty in this photo, but it holds water (we drained it) and they left all the equipment to go with it...but we (I) have decided we don't want it. . It runs completely under the deck and the edge of the deck is a ladder to the pool. Very dangerous for the grandchildren. So a very nice guy will get paid this week to take it apart and haul it away..

RANT- So far into this reno, we have encountered 3 paid workmen. Our heating and cooling guy is the best. He was prompt, very professional and came in under his own bid. You can see his name in this post.

We knew we needed someone to haul away trash. We picked up the local paper and I called one of the nicer ads. We made an appointment for her to come and give us an estimate on the huge trash pile we already had and told her we would have more trash piles in the future. She never showed up. An hour past her appointment time she called to say she was on her way out of town. Never said anything about an emergency, but said she would call when she got back. She never did. We never heard her again.

In the same paper there was another smaller ad that said "Odd jobs, call Rich or Tom". I called, he came and he is just as professional as the HVAC

The same day as the heating guy came, we had a local guy in to give us some estimates on flooring and a whole kitchen. We talked carpet, vinyl, laminate and more. Oh, and no samples! We were told that he would get back to us with the estimates the following week. I called Friday of that week and nope...he was gone to a rodeo and would call us on Monday....Monday came and went. The whole week went. It's been two weeks now and no estimates. And no phone call explaining why. I am pretty sure that he won't get any of our business. I like to shop local, I like to keep my money in my neighborhood. This time I have no choice. I will be calling someone else...

And it was a short weekend as Rich is on his way to Oklahoma so I got to come home...YIPPEE!! I get to clean out the fridge, vacuum and grocery shop... which is way more fun that mudding and taping...

3 comments:

Looks like you are moving right along. Maybe you could compromise and have hubby put doors at the bottom of your cubby space...and then you just don't put anything IN that section. He will be happy that it's not wasted space but you can just leave it empty and he might never discover you are "wasting" that space. LOL

We had the no-shows and no call people experience,too. Hubby was not happy at all. We tried to use local people also and we did for the most part. Hubby talked to neighbors and the help that did show for the next people needed. Good luck. Vernie